IN TIME

20th Century Fox Film Corporation

Rated PG-13

Running time: 109 Minutes



20th Century Fox Film Corporation's In Time, is set in the near future where time is literally money - and if you run out of time, you run out of life.

Time poor Justin Timberlake, not meeting his quota of making time scanners, saves the life of Matt Bomer - who has a century of life on his clock. In gratitude, and because he is tired of living forever, Bomer transfers most of the time on his clock to Timberlake while Timberlake is asleep. Timberlake wakes up - just in time to see Bomer's time run out. Timberlake then must go on the run before the ghetto Minute Men and the Time Keepers discover Timberlake has more time than he should.

At first Timberlake decides to get out of the ghetto time zone that is his home - and live it up in the rich time zone. Traveling across the different time zones requires more and more time for payment, which surprises ghetto-raised Timberlake. While in the rich time zone, time-rich Timberlake meets Amanda Seyfried and gambles with her rich father Vincent Kartheiser at their mansion party. When Time Keeper investigator Cillian Murphy crashes the party to arrest Timberlake for the death of Bomer and take Timberlake's extra time - Timberlake takes Seyfried hostage and they go on the run.

While the beginning may start out similar to Blade Runner, the movie soon turns into Bonnie and Clyde. While kidnaped, rich Seyfried soon has her clock drained by the leader of the gang of Minutemen in the ghetto. Soon, Seyfried is living minute by minute, just as Timberlake has been living minute by minute all of his life. In order to change life in the ghetto - Seyfried and Timberlake soon begin to rob Kartheiser's time banks and disseminate the time scanners to the people.

While this supposedly takes place in the near future, it seems that the technology to produce this culture must have taken place over a long period of time - especially if you engineer everyone to be of the age of 25. The culture is too near to the our present for such a radical cultural change. Also it is somehow implied that everyone's clock just suddenly appeared, which would require a major scientific breakthrough to effect the entire world all at once. Other than that, the moral of using time as money and that when you run out of time - you die. This is a rather graphic portrayal of being broke, as shown with Timberlake's mother Olivia Wilde. A much more interesting portrayal than people just running out of money and being broke. This idea makes you appreciate being much more frugal with your money.

Pancho
All people smile in the same language.

 Pancho's Movie Reviews

Cowboys & Aliens

Universal Pictures

Rated PG-13

Running time: 118 minutes



Set in the old west, Universal Pictures Cowboys & Aliens has amnesiac Daniel Craig waking up with an alien weapon strapped to his wrist and soon comes up against aliens from space.

When Craig arrives in a frontier town, the townspeople realize he is a wanted criminal and the sheriff arrests him. Cattle rancher Harrison Ford wants revenge on Craig for what Craig did to his son and wants Craig for himself, but before Craig can get shipped off to a larger town for trial - aliens arrive and kidnap some of the townspeople, including Ford's son, the no good Paul Dano. Mysterious Olivia Wilde convinces Craig to go after the townspeople which would in the process help Craig recover his lost memory. Craig joins Ford as they go on a quest to bring Ford's boy and the rest of the townspeople home from the aliens.

This film is True Grit meets Battle Los Angeles with the film being mostly a western. There is hardly any hi-tech gadgetry aside from Craig's wrist gun and the foo fighters.

The reason the aliens are here is not really explained aside from the initial reason - nor the reason why the beastial aliens kidnapped people in the first place, although Craig looks like he was part of an experiment. With Ford turning out to be a former Army officer, the movie soon turns out to be an Indiana Jones meets James Bond movie, although I accepted British Craig as an American. Soon, all the various human groups - townspeople, cattle ranchers, stage coach robbers, and native americans - join forces against the aliens in a battle for survival.

I was upset the dog was not used more throughout the movie. What should be obvious with the dog, but then he would just be there, then disappear, then show up again and that was rather irritating for a such a neutral character. Other than those things, I thought this off-beat movie was pretty good.

The director Jon Favreau also insisted the film should only be shot on film since this is a Western, so I do not think there will be any 3-D versions of this film.

See UFO Bob's video review of Cowboys & Aliens:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-6dQO6d74E

Rated PG-13 for violence. Running time: 118 minutes.

Pancho

All people smile in the same langauge.

TRON: Legacy

Walt Disney Pictures

Rated PG

Running time: 127 minutes































Click below to watch the Tron: Legacy trailer.



In Walt Disney Pictures TRON: LEGACY, Jeff Bridges troubled son Garrett Hedlund searches for his game designer father Bridges who has been missing for 20 years. In an old underground office at his father's old arcade business, Hedlund gets suddenly pulled into the digital grid world of Tron, where his father's old program Clu, Jeff Bridges, controls the grid and now wants to control Hedlund.

A sequel to the movie TRON, the movie TRON: LEGACY has several homages to the original movie, including the original Tron game which Hedlund tries to play, as well as having a song from Journey. However, I think that TRON: LEGACY has more action and characterization to me than in the original movie. The father-son relationship between Bridges and Hedlund supplies a relationship that I liked which was missing from the original movie - as well as having the relationship between Bridges program character Clu, and with Clu having a relationship with both Bridges and Hedlund. When Hedlund first meets Clu, I expected a "Luke, I am your father" type of scene. Bruce Boxleitner's program character of Tron from the original movie has very little screen time in this movie - since the movie is really about Hedlund's search for his father Bridges, rather than of Boxleitner's story. Olivia Wilde's character basically takes up Boxleitner's role in TRON: LEGACY. Wilde is very good in a fight and she also saves Hedlund a few times, even though Hedlund could also hold his own in a fight. At the beginning of the movie, there are scenes concerning Bridges company Encom and doing a product launch of a new operating system. You expect similar cut-throat business practices in the movie that the original TRON had, especially with the son of the bad guy from TRON as one of the company's designers - but once you enter the world of Tron, the movie does not return to the real world.

For those who watch the movie in 3-D - the real world in the beginning of the movie is shot in 2-D and it is only when you enter the world of Tron that the movie becomes 3-D. This is a similar technique that The Wizard of Oz used where the real world of The Wizard of Oz was in black and white and the land of Oz was in color. There are also several scenes of a fairly elegant home setting that reminds me of several scenes from the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, which also had an elegant hotel setting. The ending of the movie, although cute, does not exactly make sense to me scientifically given the context of the film - but if you were looking for scientific accuracy do not expect it from this movie.

Rated PG for violence. Running time: 127 minutes.

Pancho
All people smile in the same language.

Pancho's Movie Reviews